Vice President Leni Robredo urged everyone to remember the victims of human rights violations and to be vigilant against the threat of Martial Law – “not in this lifetime, never again.”
Robredo released this statement on Wednesday, September 21, on the 44th anniversary of the declaration of Martial Law after former President Ferdinand Marcos Sr. signed the Presidential Decree 1081.
“We call upon those of us who serve in the government to continue to be instruments of truth and justice and to maintain an unwavering commitment to the rule of law. Let us be safeguards of freedoms of life, liberty, speech, and due process,” Robredo said.
“Not in this lifetime, never again,” she added.
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Robredo considered it as the Filipinos’ “collective responsibility” to make sure that the victims’ stories are “neither forgotten nor twisted for political purposes and ambitions.”
She also gave a glimpse of Martial Law in numbers as she urged everyone “to remember the 70,000 who were imprisoned, the 34,000 who were tortured, the 3,240 who were killed, and the 390 who disappeared during one of the darkest periods of our history.”
President Rodrigo Duterte’s critics fear that Martial Law might be imposed given the president’s goal to curb criminality and drugs. More than 3,000 people have been killed since the current administration started its campaign against drugs. Senator Leila de Lima, one of Duterte’s most vocal critics, even said that Duterte’s war on drugs is a “Martial Law without the formal declaration.”
Duterte also said on Tuesday that he is considering the idea of reviving the Philippine Constabulary to stop “urban terrorism.”
The PC was at the forefront in implementing Martial Law during the Marcos regime. It was abolished in 1999 through a law that established the Philippine National Police (PNP), which is considered “civilian in nature.”
Sources: (rappler.com, newsinfo.inquirer.net, gmanetwork.com)
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